Johanne Dion: Citizen Reporter

• Swine Flu: Exactly Who Are We Protecting?

  The swine flu is being covered by the media with the emphasis on vaccinations, washing hands and sneezing inside our elbows. But is the information the public needs and has a right to being made available? Or is the coverage done in a way to favor the pharmaceutical industry and to mostly ignore the role pig CAFOs play in the mixing of new viruses and antibiotic-resistant bacteria?
  
  Case in point: April 30th: the WHO, "...bowing to pressure from meat industry producers..." decides to change the name of the swine flu.
  
  Case in point: July 16th: Canadian investigative reporter Alex Roslin finds statistical correlations between pig density per capita in most regions or Canadian Provinces and the number of hospitalisations and deaths due to swine flu in the same region.
  
  Case in ...read full post
  
  
  Comments (2)  |  September 16, 2009

• Possible swine flu pandemic was feared by many, years ago...

  In June 2002, the Coalition Citoyenne Santé & Environnement was founded by citizens who were objecting to pig CAFOs in the province of Quebec. There were many reasons to not want industrialised pig farms, the same as in Europe and the United States: one that was mentioned many times is that these concentrated animal farms would be breeding pools for superbugs. 
  
  The fact that pigs are the stepping stone between the many avian viruses and man, and that antibiotics are regularly used in micro-dosing to promote fast growth in CAFOs made the threath of epidemics very real. Well, here we are, 7 years later. Swine flu has struck. 
  
  
  "New U.S. swine flu cases spread pandemic fears"
  
  Here is the link:
  
  http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/30398682/
  
  
  Comments (0)  |  April 27, 2009

• Factory Farms and the TVA Spill: How Environmental Disasters Affect Our Health

  I've been reading the blog of the Tennessee Coal Ash Survivor Network about the symptoms afflicting the population around the Kingston coal plant disaster. It reminded me about the health problems I had while desperately trying to stop a 5,800 pig factory farm from being built in my small town of 5,400 people. 
  
  I've lived all my life on the Richelieu River and had been trying to stop the pollution that prevented me from being able to swim in it like when I was a child. Knowing that a factory farm and liquid manure spreading was inevitably coming to be upriver from me made me sick--mentally and physically.
  
  I started losing weight: more than 30 pounds in a few months. I started having trouble sleeping: something blissfully unknown to me until then. I started having heart palpitations. Stress made my throat contract so much my voice started to get raspy. A doctor suspected thyroid problems. I started having high blood pressure, something I never had, nor anybody ...read full post

  
  
  Comments (0)  |  March 3, 2009

• The Factory Farm and Water Pollution

  In a factory farm, the animals live on a perforated floor over a concrete slab. Especially for the wellbeing of pigs during hot weather, the buildings and pigs are watered down to bring down body temperature, and also to gather the urine and manure. The whole mix flows in a containment pit and is then pumped into the concrete pit outside.

  
  
  [Photo: One of the two liquid manure pits built in Richelieu for the pig CAFO]
  
  In my town, so that the manure pits don't fill up too quickly, a roof was built above the concrete construction. Public relations propaganda says that it is so that the smell doesn't waft out. The reason the farmer doesn't want the pit to fill up too quickly is that the only way to empty it is to spread the content on his land: something to be done as infrequently and as quickly as possible in order to keep ...read full post

  
  
  Comments (0)  |  February 23, 2009

• The Factory Farm and Air Pollution

  In my previous entry, "The Small Town and the Factory Farm", I wrote about how factory farms are forced upon a community in a very undemocratic process. Political, corporate and financial priorities tend to push aside community and environmental concerns about intensive agricultural practices and factory farms. I also wrote about my emotional attachment to the river in front of my home and how I feared the new pig farm upstream would jeopardize the health of the river's ecosystem. You might wonder why a citizen of the United States should worry about how pigs are raised in Canada; consider this: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada says that in 2007, Canada exported 1.03 million tons of pork to the USA.

  I would now like to go into some of the nuts and bolts that bring credibility to the gut reaction when a factory farm becomes part of everyday life in a community. The first problem that comes to mind when "pig farm" and ...read full post

  
  
  Comments (1)  |  February 20, 2009

• The Small Town and the Factory Farm

  I was asked to tell the story of a pig farm, a CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation) that is, in my little town of less than 5,500 citizens, called Richelieu. My town is on the Richelieu River, outlet of Lake Champlain which divides New York and Vermont. Living in the province of Quebec, in Canada, things are a little different than is the U.S. of A. But not much. 

   

  Aerial photo of site of CAFO before it was built, Richelieu River in background 

  PROVINCIAL POLICY
  
  First of all, I must explain that the nitty-gritty of agriculture is decided on the provincial level here in Canada. So about 10 years ago, our province decided we should go global, and because of our short summers, it was decided that the way to make money was to export pork. It was also decided that raising pork on litter (straw or woodchips) was not efficient enough. I also suspect that ...read full post

  
  
  Comments (1)  |  February 13, 2009

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